With a yearly ad spend of $147,473,000, Nokia has emerged as the top global ad spender in India, according to the ‘Top 1000 Brands’ survey conducted by TNS in 10 key APAC markets, including India. Three Indian brands – ICICI, Kingfisher and Taj – have been named as the most admired consumer brands across the Asia-Pacific alongside global majors like LG, Sony, Cadbury, HP and Nokia in their respective categories. Meanwhile, moving up one place to take this year’s No. 1 spot as Asia Pacific’s top brand is Japanese electronic brand Sony.

Commenting on the findings, Shobha Subramanian, Executive Director, TNS
India said, “Reaching and retaining the ‘Best Brand’ popularity as revealed in the
Top 1,000 brands study; demonstrate their success in building awareness and differentiation in a challenging and competitive category. This goes beyond mere market or sales share into the realm of consumer share of mind. Brands such as
Sony, Nokia, ICICI and HP are in the forefront not just in India but across various markets in this region.”

300 people who aged 15-64 were interviewed in each country. In all, 3,600 people were interviewed for the survey across 10 countries including, for the first time, consumers from Japan, Korea and Australia. TNS however, only counted one mention of any brand by any respondent, even if respondents associated a brand with a number of sub-categories.

The outcome:

As a result of the survey Nokia, Lipton, Johnson & Johnson, Cadbury, and Hewlett-Packard emerged as the Top-5 global brand ad-spenders in India, when compared to China and Japan across the same categories.

Top 10 Ad-spenders in India out of the 1000 surveyed Brands across APAC

The survey further showcased that Hewlett-Packard took the biggest leap from its’ 2007 rank of 44, as it rose to rank-5 in 2008; where as Canon, Nike and Google took a leap of 12, 9, and 14 places respectively. Among the top loser was Nokia, which lost 10 positions from last year to become only the 11th best brand in the APAC region.